Letters to the Editor
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Heather's Dennis Miller Moment
It's really sad to watch the decay of a once witty and aware comic voice decend into crankism and needlessly so. Heather used to be aware to both mock yet indulge the need for cliched rants, because she could tell a witty cliche from a tired one.
Heather several years shy of 40 yet already engaging in the sort of "back in my day" bullshit which reminds me of the Monty Python "4 Yorkshiremen" sketch. "I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night...when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah. "
She is partially being contrarian for kicks, yet she also clearly buys into some of it. Which is sad because it's somewhat right wing crap, because here the contrarian pose means siding with the bully, the adult who should know better over the kid who is just a kid. It also involve buying into the "crazy bitch mom" position of an bitter absent Dad.
The entire rant rests on a rightwing strawman view of the world as overrun by PC weakness. Which just ain't so. In my experience, parents still sternly discipline their kids. Hell, they still use affectionate profanity.
It's just that now if they cross the line and start screaming at a 12 year old like a CEO berating a lackey, someone might point out they've crossed a line.
Let's not forget the context:
You have insulted me, you don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being, I don't give a damn if you're 12-years-old, or 11-years-old, or that you're a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass......I am gonna get on a plane or I am gonna come out there for the day and I'm gonna straighten your ass out when I see you, do you understand me? I'm gonna really make sure you get it. Then I'm gonna get on a plane and I'm gonna turn around and I'm gonna come home. So you better be ready Friday, the 20th, to meet with me so I'm gonna let you know just how I feel about what a rude little pig you really are. You are a rude thoughtless little pig, okay.
Yeah, that makes me nostalgic.
Here's the thing: every parent loses it now and then. Decent parents, however, are kind and smart enough not do it as a recording. Mean messages are ugly suprises which exist over and beyond their orignal context, without humanizing interaction.
If a parent does lose it this way, they are capable of realizing it's a bad thing. My parents are much older than Mr. Baldwin, but even they get angry voice mail is crossing a line.
It's true many of us, parents or not, have lost it on voicemail or email or etc. That doesn't excuse doing it, and it sure as hell doesn't excuse the amount of venom here.
Baldwin made a choice. He not only left a mean message, but also used it to strike at his mom, putting his kid in the middle of their ugliness. So it's no suprise he's a figure of fun and criticism now.
So Heather's defense seems disingenuous and minimizing abuse, especially with the momentary lip service "Sure, we all cringe when we overhear bad parents berating their children...I'm not talking about those freaks" But you see, we are and Baldwin seems to qualify as one. And with this rant, you seem like the Dennis Miller type who defends him.